Disgraced Thanou set to sue IOC even as gold heads her way

The International Olympic Committee is heading for a major row this week with Ekaterina Thanou, the controversial Greek sprinter who overshadowed the build-up to the Athens Olympics four years ago after she was kicked out on the eve of the Games for evading a series of drugs tests.

The 33-year-old Thanou served a two-year ban after missing three drugs tests before Athens along with her training partner, Kostas Kederis, the 2000 Olympic 200m champion. But she is back on the Greek team for Beijing after qualifying for the 100m, although she is not considered a medal contender.

She and Kederis also allegedly faked a motorbike crash to cover up for missing one of the drugs tests, an incident that remains the subject of court action in Greece.

The IOC have now threatened to block Thanou participating in Beijing by re-opening the disciplinary hearing that it closed four years ago when she and Kederis withdrew from the Games on the eve of the opening ceremony, where he had been due to light the Olympic torch.

But that is only half the story because the IOC faces the embarrassment of trying to ban Thanou only a few days after awarding her a gold medal. In a bizarre situation, IOC officials have admitted privately that legally they do not have any choice but to give her the medal they took away from Marion Jones earlier this year after the American admitted having taken banned performance-enhancing drugs at the time of the Sydney Olympics in 2000.

Thanou had finished second behind Jones in the 100m and has been lobbying to be upgraded since last October when Jones made her public confession. Her British-based lawyer, Gregory Ioannidis, a professor at Buckingham University, has threatened to sue if she is not awarded the gold medal when the IOC's ruling executive board discuss the matter this week.

Sebastian Coe, the chairman of London 2012, has suggested that the gold medal position be left blank, but his stance is undermined by the fact that in April the International Association of Athletics Federations, the organisation he is the vice-president of, upgraded Thanou to the silver medal position in the 100m at the 2001 World Championships after disqualifying Jones. It followed legal advice that they had no other choice.

Observer Sport understands that Jacques Rogge, the president of the IOC, has lobbied hard for Thanou not to be awarded the medal, but lawyers have warned him that this is legally unsustainable as there is no evidence that she was doing anything wrong at the time.

'I have been maligned and my career was damaged,' said Thanou when she arrived in Beijing on Friday. 'This is still going on. Enough is enough. I have never tested positive for any [banned substance]... I don't think any other runners are subjected to this.'

Thanou has even threatened to initiate criminal action of her own against unnamed IOC executive members after she claimed that she was threatened by some of them to withdraw from the Games in 2004 and that this was unlawful.

There is likely to be little support for Thanou, though, and there will be a huge outcry if the IOC do award Jones' tainted gold medal to another athlete over who many in the sport have suspicions about. When Thanou made her return to international competition at the European Indoor Championships in Birmingham in March 2007 she was roundly booed by the crowd.

'I have huge sympathy for the fact they want to do it, but this is when the legal side gets in the way,' said Michele Verroken, the former head of anti-doping at UK Sport who now runs Sporting Integrity, a consultancy that advises sports bodies on the issue of drugs.

'We are now in a new era of counting back in results that previously anti-doping rules had not anticipated. It's about a broader issue of defrauding people in sport. It's like being guilty of professional misconduct. The legal framework that might exist around the anti-doping framework does not encourage the moral framework that athletes are encouraged to live by.'

Thanou has argued that she was only guilty of the same offence in 2004 as Britain's Christine Ohuruogu, who was banned for a year in 2006 after missing three out-of-competition tests, but who successfully returned to the sport to win the world 400m title last year.

Ohuruogu is one of three members of Britain's Olympic team who have been picked after serving bans for missing tests. She joins the former world triathlon champion Tim Don and the world judo bronze medallist Peter Cousins, who both served three-month bans.

'I disagree with that,' said Verroken. 'The legal framework says it was a missed test, but the moral framework says she [Thanou] is being punished for an alleged fraudulent claim that she was involved in an accident when she wasn't to try to cover up the fact she missed a test. That is not the same as Christine and Tim.'

Nevertheless, it is incredible that four years after armed Greek police were needed to escort Thanou out of the IOC hotel in Athens following her disciplinary hearing that she is again set to haunt the build-up to another Olympic Games.